


Homework

by Suspicious_Popsicle



Series: Mix Tape [4]
Category: Tales of Vesperia
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-16
Updated: 2014-01-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 23:13:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1138590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suspicious_Popsicle/pseuds/Suspicious_Popsicle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A/N: Vanessa Mae does an awesome version of the song Flynn plays. It was originally composed by Mike Batt. Definitely check that out.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: The characters in this story are from Tales of Vesperia and do not belong to me.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Homework

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Vanessa Mae does an awesome version of the song Flynn plays. It was originally composed by Mike Batt. Definitely check that out.
> 
> Disclaimer: The characters in this story are from Tales of Vesperia and do not belong to me.

“But now I have a _remainder_!”

Karol’s plaintive moan caught Flynn’s attention just as he touched bow to strings, and he lowered his violin, listening curiously. The sharp crinkle of paper was actually loud enough to carry into his room, and he heard Yuri, sounding very much at his wit’s end, ask: “What the hell’s a remainder?”

“It’s the leftover bit.”

“Oh. I knew that.”

“Yuri! This doesn’t make sense!”

“Yeah, I see that. What do the directions say?”

“The same thing they’ve been saying for half an hour. We’re doing something wrong!”

“We’re doing what it told us to do.”

“Then why’s it coming out _wrong_?”

Yuri growled something that sounded like a string of profanities followed by the word: ‘math.’ Setting his violin back into its case, Flynn left his room behind and headed for the kitchen. It was the first time that he had been able to practice while Karol was over because, for once, he hadn’t come to work on his drumming. Yet there Flynn was, abandoning his violin to go see what exactly had derailed Yuri’s unexpected tutoring gig. They had done fine through literature, but it seemed even Yuri Lowell’s surprisingly broad knowledge base wasn’t enough to tackle that bane of high school students everywhere: mathematics.

Stepping quietly out of the hall, he saw them sitting at the dining room table, frowning down at an open textbook, pages of notes and problems spread out around them.

“Can I help?”

The question—or, perhaps more accurately, the announcement of his presence—startled Yuri. He did his best to hide his surprise, but it was a reminder that things were different between them, and not in a good way. He’d never startled Yuri before that unfortunate conversation with Estelle had forced Flynn to make an admission that had turned their slowly improving relationship into a whole new kind of awkward.

“Are you any good at math?”

Flynn had heard far too many blond jokes in his life to be offended at the doubt in Karol’s tone. He sat down next to him and tried not to be hurt when Yuri immediately got up from the table.

“You guys have fun with that. I’m gonna make dinner.”

“Whatcha makin’?”

“Sloppy Joes.”

“Awesome!” Karol was halfway out of his seat when Yuri turned back and pointed.

“Sit. If you don’t make the Honor Roll, your parents aren’t going to let you stay in the band. I need my drummer.”

Sighing gustily, Karol deflated back into his chair. He walked Flynn through the problem, drumming reflexively on the table the whole way through. When he sat back, he started in on the edge of the table with a second pencil until Flynn took them away. It didn’t stop him, and Flynn gave up and tried to overlook the rhythmic beat of fingers against wood as he explained where things had gone wrong.

Yuri clattered about in the kitchen, easy enough to ignore at first, until he started humming to himself. It was “Contradanza,” the piece Flynn had been practicing earlier that day, and the notes faded in and out while Yuri moved from one thing to another, browning meat and toasting buns, cutting up celery sticks and radishes for sides and pouring glasses of water. He didn’t actually seem to be paying much attention to his humming, and the melody faltered and jumped, broken up by quiet ‘da-da-da-da-dum’s and rapid taps of fingertips on the countertop, or becoming a completely different song every now and again as he got sidetracked by particular phrases.

“He’s storyboarding,” Karol said.

“What?” Flynn hadn’t realized he’d been staring, but he turned back to find himself on the end of one of the boastful grins Karol reserved for his band.

“That’s what he calls it when he’s working on a new song. He’s putting different pieces together to see if anything fits right. Dragon Swarm’ll have a new song in a week.”

“Flattery will get you the biggest Sloppy Joe,” Yuri said. “Wrap it up. Dinner’s almost done.”

They would have to continue after they’d eaten. For the time being, Flynn helped gather up books and papers, stacking them neatly, only to have Karol grab the whole pile and shove it carelessly into his messenger bag. Yuri brought the drinks to the table and sent them into the kitchen, offering up dinner buffet-style. They piled their sandwiches high and helped themselves to celery sticks and little death’s head radishes. Yuri caught Flynn smiling crookedly at the rough skull faces he’d carved with a pairing knife and smirked as he popped one into his mouth.

“The metal version of radish rosettes?”

“Just a bit of inspiration gained from a road trip a while back.” Yuri took his plate to the table and sat down across from Flynn.

Karol swallowed hard, already a third of the way through his sandwich. “Was that when you went to that holiday in Myorzo?”

“Got it in one.”

“Holiday?”

“It’s called the Day of the Dead,” Karol enthused. “Sounds really morbid, right? It’s supposed to be a celebration of people’s ancestors, and Yuri says it’s like this big giant party for the whole city, and there’s music and parades and people paint their faces and get all dressed up and they have these little painted skulls _everywhere_!”

Flynn couldn’t help smiling a little. “I think I might have heard of it.” He looked to Yuri. “You’ve been?”

“Crash and I went. We were…between jobs at the time, and thought it would be fun to go on a road trip. It was just the two of us in this beat up old hatchback, and we broke down one town short of making it to Myorzo.

“I didn’t think there _were_ any towns around Myorzo. From what I’ve heard, it’s out in the middle of nowhere.”

“It is. Saying we were in a town was being generous. The place had a gas station, a biker bar, and a tattoo parlor.”

“Please tell me this story doesn’t end with you getting some regrettable tattoo.”

“Depends on what you mean by ‘regrettable.’” He smirked around a celery stick until it became clear that he wasn’t going to be getting a rise out of Flynn. “I didn’t get a tattoo. I was trying to fix the car, and Crash wandered off. He came back maybe half an hour later with a beer in each hand and about half a dozen bikers all around him, and he just grins at me and goes: ‘They have accepted me as one of their own!’

“At that point I didn’t know what was going on with the car anyway, and the guy at the gas station said he couldn’t get someone in to look at it till the next morning, so I just said ‘fuck it’ and went and had a beer with them.

“We stood around and talked for a while. Cool guys. I think Crash still texts one of them. Anyway, we got to talking about the Day of the Dead and caught their interest enough that they offered to give us a ride over and back.”

“And you accepted?”

“Sure, why not?” He scoffed at the doubtful look on Flynn’s face. “It was fine. We went down for the holiday, partied for a while, got ourselves some of those little sugar skulls where they write your name on them, and headed back. Crash and I slept in the car and drove home the next day after the mechanic had fixed it up. End of story.”

The way he tore into his dinner as soon as he’d finished made it pretty clear that Yuri was done talking, and Flynn wondered what had set him off. Was that what it had been like when he had first moved in? Had Yuri constantly been trying to guess where his flares of temper had come from? If that was so, it certainly made sense why they had been finding it so hard to get along. They’d had little breakthroughs, but it never seemed to be enough to get rid of the tensions between them. What made it all so much worse was that, had circumstances been different, Flynn was sure they could have been friends.

The rest of dinner passed quietly. Even Karol sensed the strange atmosphere and kept glancing back and forth nervously. Flynn wasn’t sure what to tell him, and only shrugged, trying to let him know that he didn’t get it either.

Wordlessly, Yuri insisted on handling the dishes afterward, leaving Flynn to go over the math problem one more time. Karol seemed to understand well enough by the time the kitchen was set to rights, and Flynn returned to his room, saving Yuri the trouble of hovering uncertainly just outside the dining room.

He went back to his practice, half-listening to the murmur of voices during the occasional pauses between notes. It wasn’t half an hour later that he heard the front door open and a few minutes after that, Karol called out a goodbye to him, along with thanks for his help. It made him smile to know that one of the mistakes made from the worst of his anger at his mother’s betrayal had been so readily put right. Karol had forgiven him with a simple apology and Yuri’s relatively understated encouragement. If only it was so easy to make things right with his capricious, metalhead roommate.

Footsteps, creaks and groans, shuffling papers, the clink and scrape of small objects being moved about were the sounds of Yuri’s restless movements throughout the house. Eventually, he retreated to his bedroom at the end of the hall, the door that was never locked and only rarely fully shut. Yuri genuinely seemed to like people and was almost never by himself. It was something Flynn hadn’t actually realized until he’d begun noticing Yuri the person, rather than all the little aggravations and rejections he had represented in those early days. It didn’t come as much of a surprise, therefore, when some time later, Flynn heard a knock on his door.

“Come in.”

Yuri didn’t actually enter, at first. He stuck his head in, looking around the room rather than at its occupant. He was in a strange mood, not quite frowning, but lacking that charge that he had about him when looking for a fight.

“What’s up?”

“Just wanted to know what that song was that you were playing earlier.”

“It’s called ‘Contradanza.’ Would you like me to play it for you?”

He hesitated, then nodded and stepped fully into the room, Anemone in one hand. “Yeah.”

Flynn waved him to a seat on the bed, but Yuri walked right past him. The computer chair was currently holding a short stack of books, a messenger bag, and the violin case, and Yuri didn’t even bother trying to empty it off. He took a seat on the corner of Flynn’s desk and looked at him expectantly.

When he’d first heard “Contradanza” years ago, Flynn had never thought he’d be sharing a house with a metalhead. Going to see Depth Charge perform at ZaFest had reminded him of the song, and it had seemed to him that Yuri would probably like it. He hadn’t had a chance to play it for him over the days since then, but he’d been practicing, hoping…hoping for some way to make a connection. Yuri had reached out to him when Flynn hadn’t even realized he needed it. He wanted to be the one to reach out this time, if only to try and fix the mess he’d made.

The song was fast and sharp, the notes practically leaping over each other to be free from the strings. The energy in it flowed back into him, making him smile as he played, swaying with the music. It was one of those songs that reached into people and called for them to move, to nod their heads or tap their feet or _dance_. No one possessed of a soul should be able to sit still while listening to it. It was quick and graceful, an eager smile, a dancer’s leap, an exclamation of pure wonder. It was something he’d been wanting to share with Yuri, and when he heard the first, hesitant notes rise from Anemone to join him, he opened his eyes, smiling brightly in invitation.

Yuri found the rhythm of the song and strengthened it, the deeper notes of his guitar soft and steady beneath the high, clear voice of the violin. Flynn urged him on, switching up phrases and adding flourishes until Yuri’s playing took on some of that spark and picked up the pace. Flynn let him lead, let him slip a little further into the music, then turned the notes aside from their expected progression, improvising and forcing Yuri to catch up.

He saw the tiny grin on Yuri’s face, saw how his eyes had lit up and how he was no longer slouching, but leaning forward into the song. Yuri’s nimble fingers flew over the strings, the pick a tiny blur of color as he grabbed the notes he wanted and tossed them into the mix as fast as he could. Echoes of Flynn’s playing rose to the surface and fell away again as Yuri borrowed pieces of it to work into his own riffs.

There was no awkwardness between them as they played, no tension, no unresolved issues. There wasn’t any place for it. Everything else was thrown aside to focus on making music together, and Flynn knew as his bow flew over the strings that he wasn’t just having fun—they were damned good at it. It was as if they could anticipate where the other would go next and have the complimentary notes ready to flow out into the room and meld together. In the space of a song, they were connected, and it was as wonderful and light a feeling as that first discovery of their common ground had been.

Eventually, however, Flynn had to let go. He let the notes slow and fade, and Yuri’s playing dropped off as well. Silence like a contented sigh rushed in around them and Flynn set his violin aside to take a seat on his bed.

“You liked it. I thought you would.”

“Yeah.”

“I’d been wanting to play it for you. I was practicing earlier….” He trailed off as a thought occurred to him. “Karol said you were using it for storyboarding…? It isn’t public domain, so you won’t be able to—”

Yuri waved him off. “No, it’s fine. I was just playing around. This new song….” He ran his fingers over Anemone and set her aside. “It’s not coming. I’m just not getting anything when I try to work on it. I thought maybe I could get a running start, you know? Make a leap from there.”

“Did it help any?”

“Maybe.”

He smiled softly, staring down at his guitar. It was an expression Flynn hadn’t seen him make before, something softer than his usual toothy grins or sharp smirks. It almost made him look cute, and Flynn had to look away, equal parts embarrassed and exasperated that he was so far gone that he was thinking Yuri Lowell—of all people—might be _cute_. Yuri was a lot of things. Cute was not one of them. Not if one was thinking rationally.

“What the hell? Are you blushing?”

Flynn rubbed a hand over his face and heard Yuri get up.

“Not thinking inappropriate thoughts, are you?”

_Not in the way you’re suggesting_ , he thought. Explaining felt like it would only make things worse, however, so an outright lie would do. He tried to sound affronted. “No.”

“Liar.” Yuri almost sounded casual, but he was practically running for the door. “Thanks for the improv session. See you tomorrow.”

He disappeared into the hall and, moments later, Flynn heard the quiet click of his door shutting. With a sigh, he put his violin away and began getting ready for bed, trying all the while not to wonder if Yuri had turned the lock.


End file.
